Bob Hunter commentary: Tribe fans left stranded as caravan skips stop

By now, we all know the Cleveland Indians didn't bring their annual winter caravan to Columbus this year.

By now, we all know the Cleveland Indians didn't bring their annual winter caravan to Columbus this year.

This seems curious given that the Cincinnati Reds drew more than 500 fans at the Polaris Fashion Place mall yesterday. The Indians' event has always drawn well in the past, and the Clippers are their triple-A affiliate.

All kinds of theories have been advanced for why Tribe officials made this odd decision, and in this age of anything-goes journalism, it seemed like a good idea to debunk these theories before people get the wrong idea:

• The Indians aren't really a major-league team after stumbling to a 69-93 record last season, so they aren't required to act like one in the offseason. There's no denying that last year's squad was a poor excuse for a major-league team and that ownership owed its loyal fans a better product. But that doesn't mean that the Indians shouldn't try to sell their product to their fan base in the offseason. People buy terrible products every day. The Indians drew almost 1.4 million fans last year, didn't they?

• Shin-Soo Choo is the team's only star, so having an extensive winter caravan would be self-defeating unless Choo could be cloned and appear in two of three places at once. While it's true that the team is embarrassingly star-deficient, Travis Hafner or Grady Sizemore could have assumed the role formerly occupied by the late Bob Feller and talked about the good old days, such as they were.

• There is no real difference between the team the Indians put on the field in Cleveland and the one they put on the field in Huntington Park, and Columbus fans wouldn't be sure which team's winter caravan they were attending. Dumb, dumb, dumb. The Indians have Choo and the Clippers don't. How hard is that?

• Ownership is embarrassed to have traded away all of its established stars for prospects the past three seasons and doesn't want to go before the people and explain it. With this track record, the team's ownership should be hiding in a cave in the South Pacific, but it apparently believes it can sell the fans with catch phrases like "building from within," "developing the core" and "the nucleus is in place." Embarrass these guys? Never.

• The Indians' brass thinks Strongsville - one of the four remaining spots on this year's tour - is more important than Columbus. Hey, maybe these bozos think Strongsville is Columbus. They traded away two Cy Young Award winners, didn't they?

• The Indians can't afford the bus trip to Columbus. The way this team has jettisoned veteran players and their salaries, it should have the money to finance the construction of a bullet train between Cleveland and Columbus.

• Team officials are ashamed that spare-part outfielder Austin Kearns was the only free agent of note that they signed in the offseason to bolster a miserable team. Ashamed? They're excited about it. He almost got them there last year, didn't he?

• The members of the traveling party were slipped truth serum by a devious fan who wanted to make the Indians look bad, so team officials limited tour stops to cities where the fans have already heard so much garbage that they have stopped listening. I don't doubt the good people of Beachwood, North Olmsted, Akron and Strongsville have stopped listening, but this truth serum theory is clearly false, as demonstrated by this quote from new Indians general manager Chris Antonetti:

"We expect to be a competitive and contending team. Certainly a lot of things must go right, but I don't think there should be a limit on our expectations. We were disappointed last year and will be disappointed this year if we're not in the playoffs."

There you go. The playoffs are just around the corner.

Seriously, aren't you sorry you didn't get a chance to hear that junk in person?

Bob Hunter is a sports columnist for The Dispatch.

bhunter@dispatch.com

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